The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 36

For a dozen years she had clung to G.o.d's words. But what were these words anyway? Inventions of the brain, proximate fruits of intention. Wait, the Voice had said. And she had always understood that meant to await further instructions. But what if the waiting were part of His bidding, imposed not to humble her but to effect a sustained alertness, a sharpened attention to whatever happened? The eye of the falcon, the sun G.o.d's eye, watching over everything.

By now her note, retrieved by the wind, would be nourishing rice stalks or lotus leaves. The notion pleased her. Perhaps His long silence was like that, not an absence but a slow fruition, as of the pale yellow, plate-size lotus blossoms that swayed over the sodden expanses of Nile silt.

I know how sensitive you are to words from our time together at Koseir when you forbade me to speak the name of a certain part that I later told you against your will. But in addition to my epilepsy, I have contracted an unspeakable disease. I am loath to write this word, but I must; otherwise, nothing I say will make full sense.

Pox.

She found it puzzling that the deaconesses had sprung up in Germany and not in England, both being Protestant. In England, the rural poor and the new industrial cla.s.s cried out for such an inst.i.tution. If she studied the Kaiserswerth methods, she might transplant them and start her own inst.i.tute at home. Women not married to G.o.d, but to society, in His name.

Have you heard the old joke: One man to another: What is the price of love? Second man: Ten francs or marriage.

The true answer is pox.

What is a man to do who harbors this disease? I shall be lucky if I do not go mad. The cures are problematic. Valerian root is inexpensive and often prescribed but does not work. Gum from the lignum vitae is expensive and unproven. I shall try the mercury cure ("A night in the arms of Venus leads to a lifetime on Mercury"), which is what my father would have prescribed. The treatment must be repeated periodically, as the disease is thought to remain in the body until death.

I wanted to tell you this in Kenneh but lacked the courage. Even to speak of it is a great dishonor to you, for which I apologize.

No, she'd never gone to Egypt. Never set foot in the sand or sat on the sh.o.r.e of the Red Sea. It was not she who wished to die at Philae and instead was rescued by a man who became a friend, unlikely as that was.

And so, Rossignol, I want to say that you are beautiful. I wish that I had told you this before, but you are. Your mind is likewise beautiful. I have never met your like. I would say you have the mind of a man, but that would not suffice, either.

I know that marriage holds no appeal for you, but what else is there between a man and a woman that would not provoke the condemnation of society, that would not be considered an abomination, that would not cause us pain? I had hoped we could be lifelong friends, but alas, I am drawn to you in the way that men are drawn to women. I began to love you-it was so easy and natural. But how can we have a future with my illness?

Sat.u.r.day, 3 August 1850 Walked the bad eyes and the rheumatism in the morning. Lunch with the infant schoolmistresses. Reading Bible with penitents at evening-a new group of ten women fresh from prison.

In her heightened existence, responsible for prolonging lives, it seemed natural to entertain opposing feelings, to be what she would have once called confused, though now she did not feel confused. She felt capacious. On the one hand, she suffered the scarifying sorrow of loss, and on the other, she was proud, filled with an immaculate and pure joy. For this was love, or had been.

No more love, no more marriage. When she had refused Richard, those words had been as much a judgment on herself as on him. She had pitied herself, as though her hands had been severed before she had touched a single thing on earth-not a leaf, not the honed blade of a knife, or the silky hand of an infant. Now she had. They had touched like G.o.d and Adam on her beloved Sistine Chapel. No longer a stranger to love, she had set it aside. Rushing between patients, measuring elixirs or sitting in a profound quiet with the dying deaconess, she felt joy and grief and had no need to distinguish between them. Like the good and evil in the temples at Abu Simbel, they flowed together. They were one.

The next Thursday morning, a week after the amputation, she was alarmed to find Fuer, who had been steadily improving, stuporous and hemorrhaging from the nose. The doctor visited three times that day. She followed his instructions, placing a bladder with artificial ice on Fuer's head, renewing it every two hours, applying cold-water compresses to the back of his neck and temples. His moistened hair looked like the feathers of a molting bird. She washed his hands and chest frequently and checked his pulse every half hour. By 10 A.M. it had risen to 130. She and Sister Sophie put leeches on his temples as he drifted into and out of sensibility. She offered to stay the night with him, but Mother ordered her to her room.

She barely slept. Vigilance had rooted in her, her schedule shaped to his. She woke at 5 A.M. and found him bleeding at the temples. She held dry compresses against his brow, pressing upward with her hands flat on the cloth. Fuer stared at her so resolutely that she knew he was trying to communicate. His eyes rolled back in his head.

She called for a priest to administer extreme unction. While the old cleric prayed with enough heart for the three of them, she held the patient's hand. After that, the room quickened with activity. At nine, the doctor arrived, examined Fuer, and declared it was typhus. Mother appraised the scene to determine who should care for him in his final hours. She chose Flo.

By evening, his teeth and tongue were black, the rest of him gray. Every half hour, per the doctor's orders, she put thirty drops of ether on his head to a.s.suage the pain. His hair was straw now, trampled and l.u.s.terless. She continued to refresh the ice bladder every other hour, and hourly applied strong chamomile tea compresses to the stump, which was pink and healing nicely, like the one healthy tree left in a forest decimated by fire. Through his coma, she sensed his fear, which had been the worst aspect of his suffering all along. Strong steel and acids every hour internally and as much water as he can drink, mixed with raspberry vinegar. All day I held dry cloths to the bleeding, pressing down with my hands. This it is to live.

She slept on and off at his bedside and awoke disoriented at 8 A.M., two hours later than usual. He was still alive. At nine the doctor came but did not dress the stump. He listened to Fuer's heart and chest without ever looking at her, not wishing, she sensed, to convey emotion. After he left the room, she sat holding Fuer's damp, clay hand. He was breathing, just breathing; it was all he could manage. And then, in a few minutes, without any struggle, he died. Gone in an imperceptible instant. And where had he gone? Where did they go when they left the body?

The job was not finished. She fumigated the room with vitriolic acid and supervised the removal of the body to the chamber of the dead, where it was sprinkled with chloride of lime and no one was allowed to enter. That afternoon his sisters came to call on him. She had to turn them away weeping.

Selina came to the inst.i.tute for an afternoon's visit. She noted what a rough place it was, lacking in the usual amenities: no hot water for a bath and very often no cold water. Flo bathed, she explained, when she swam in the Rhine with the orphans. Selina was glad that Flo's family had not accompanied her. They would have been alarmed and disapproved. And interfered, Flo added.

That evening, after Selina left, Mother Fliedner asked her to accompany Deaconess Amalia the next day. They would be selling lottery tickets at the village inn to raise funds.

"What is the prize?" Flo asked.

"Money, just some money," answered Mrs. Fliedner. Flo had never heard of such an undertaking. She wondered if it was better to award a gift. Perhaps chocolates or some other delicacy?

Mother said they hadn't time to shop for chocolates and the people of the village were content to win a small pouch. Flo thought it undignified, but agreed.

The next morning she set out with Sister Amalia. Stationing themselves at a rickety table in the porte cochere where the carriages collected and deposited guests, they sold a small roll of chances. At lunchtime they picnicked by the river on bread and cheese. Sister Amalia returned to the hotel and retrieved the table and chairs. She asked Flo to help her set up outside a restaurant down the street.

"But we have sold all the tickets."

"Yes," the sister agreed. "Now we beg. People will throw in their change from dinner."

"I see. And they do not expect anything for it?"

"It's just small change," the deaconess replied, "like the poor plate at church."

They had no sign, no booklet or prospectus to distribute, Flo pointed out. The deaconess said everyone in town knew of the Fliedners' inst.i.tute. But Flo felt the need to identify herself for each customer who tarried at the table. "I am Florence Nightingale," she recited, "asking for your generosity for the work of Pastor Fliedner's Inst.i.tute for Deaconesses." The sated diners did not meet her eye or acknowledge her. She shortened her speech, mumbling "for the deaconesses" and looking down as she offered the bowl Sister Amalia had brought for the purpose.

In her boredom, she imagined people she knew exiting the restaurant. The Poetic Parcel and his new wife, Annabelle, arm in arm and deep in conversation, Richard tipping his hat, then scurrying away upon recognizing her. Parthe, fl.u.s.tered as usual, shifting from foot to foot as she chatted. Max, tripod in arm, to capture the event for posterity. WEN, in his silk top hat, and f.a.n.n.y, swathed in fur, speechless before this beggar, their splendidly brought-up second child, who was pleased as Punch for them to see her.

They collected a pathetic sum. Flo guessed she'd been asked along as a test, to be mortified or shocked. If so, she had pa.s.sed with high marks. Begging for alms did not bother her; she was not asking for herself, but for G.o.d.

That night she went home deeply contented. I have found my destiny, she wrote in Lavie, and it is so blindingly bright that I might have removed from a darkened parlor directly to a lakesh.o.r.e in a single step and there seen my own reflection. At first I was a fractured and jagged rippling, but I have smoothed and settled into a trembling liquid whole.

Perhaps it is cruel to be so candid. If so, I send you my deepest regrets. You see, though in my heart I am a red romantic, I know how foolish the pursuit of romance is. The only cure for it is celibacy, at least in the ideal case, for there is no way to protect oneself from love. I shall have to settle for the friendship of other cynics like myself.

I am honored to have known you as my friend.

I cherish you. I embrace you and beg your forgiveness with a thousand tendernesses.

Gve No, she had never been to Egypt. Never stroked his shaved head, mapping the tender b.u.mps, placing her fingertips on his lips and eyelids. She had never entered his tent, been kissed and touched there and there, her body a night sky pierced by stars.

Sat.u.r.day, 10 August 1850 89 Apothecary 2 P.M. A fever patient came in; longed to nurse him. Itchy family discharged.

4:307 P.M. Writing out receipts, etc, longed to be with the severely sick.

8:30 P.M.: Walked in the moonlight along the Rhine with Sister Sophie. Death is so much more impressive in the midst of life.

The last week was difficult on many counts, not least being the sadness of imminent departure.

On the wards, the patients worsened. Three were bedridden and three more she had to lift into and out of bed. What gainful experience could there be after Fuer? Nothing; only making beds and dragging the invalids out to bathe.

In three weeks they buried four patients, not unusual, Mother said. People tended to be very ill by the time they went to hospital.

On her last day at Kaiserswerth, she breakfasted with the probationers and deaconesses, bathed the infants in the river, and said her farewells at the hospital-all distressing, as these people felt like family now.

At four o'clock Trout and the Bracebridges fetched her in a coach. They'd taken rooms in Cologne, where they drove posthaste. Flo was anxious to draft the Kaiserswerth pamphlet. She wanted to finish it while things were still fresh in mind-her practical little room, the songs the orphans sang, everywhere the healing odor of iodine and disinfectant. She promised the Fliedners she'd return within the year. My home, my heart's home, my salvation.

Sat.u.r.day, 17 August 1850. Cologne.

Selina and Charles sightseeing all day and Trout here at the hotel with me, both of us glad for the leisure. Long letter home to Parthe explaining the blessed inst.i.tute. She will not oppose me if I can win her over first. I know she will show it to f.a.n.n.y. My happiness graces every word. The letter sings! I send her my sincerest love, for I do love them all and have missed them in my own way. Even the fighting is part of my care, I say.

In truth, her family had less power over her now that she had settled the question with G.o.d and met another monster. It was only a matter of money now, and time. Time until WEN surrendered to her will.

She had thought of Trout often at Kaiserswerth, not missing her a.s.sistance, but marveling at her situation, and at her own blindness to it. To be with her again at the hotel was comforting.

Though it was too personal and ephemeral for display, she would keep the cast of Gustave's face. In every other way, it was a perfect souvenir, blank as the desert and the paper from which it was made, and yet as shapely as any object willed into existence. What had pa.s.sed between them was just as unique and private. She felt no need to speak of it. Nor could anyone guess it. He was part of her now, and she of him. She had his face, not just in papier-mache, but also in her mind, in her fingertips. And no one could fathom any of it simply by seeing her. Just as she had looked at Trout without seeing Gilbert, who was a part of her. When she looked at another's face, she must remember this-that no one was strictly singular. A person was more than herself or himself. She determined in the future to imagine that every face she saw was illuminated that way, lit by something continuing to shine inside, like a sun that had not yet risen but would as it had every day since Creation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, SOURCES, AND A NOTE.

Perhaps because it is my first novel, this book has had many friends, which I am pleased to acknowledge here. I am thankful to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for residencies that allowed me to complete this work surrounded by peace and beauty and nurtured by the fellowship of other artists. At the Florence Nightingale Museum, the archivists and curators, in particular Caroline Roberts, extended friendly as well as helping hands to me.

I am especially grateful to Anika Streitfeld for her Solomonic book sense. Nirah Shomer, Michael Nowak, and Francis Gillen all read an earlier draft and made crucial suggestions. John Giancola, Kathleen Ochshorn, and Julie Raynor offered unflagging support.

It is also my pleasure to thank the team at Simon & Schuster: in London, Jessica Leeke; in New York, Michele Bove; Emer Flounders; Nina Pajak; and especially my editor, Anjali Singh, for her brilliance, pa.s.sion, and diligence. Thank you, as well, Jonathan Karp, for your strong support of this book.

Gillian Gill, who does not know me from Adam's off ox, generously advised me about biographical sources and corrected my clumsy nineteenth-century French. Any remaining infelicities or inaccuracies are my own.

There are not enough words in the English language-or any other-to express my grat.i.tude to my agent, Rob McQuilkin, who understood this book at every step and whose enthusiasm and confidence in it never wavered. His wisdom informs every page.

Margaret Joan Libertus, one of my dearest friends and staunchest supporters, died as this project was drawing to a close. May her name live on in the Field of Reeds.

SOURCES.

Within the weave of language in this novel, scholars of Flaubert and Nightingale will recognize phrases and sentences familiar to them. For example, I use some of Nightingale's actual diary entries verbatim, most famously the "no more love, no more marriage" excerpt that here, in her fictional life, she shows to Richard Monckton Milnes. Likewise, I have sometimes deployed genuine Flaubert quotations among the thoughts, writings, and remarks that I have invented for him.

Though I have relied in large part on primary sources-the letters, journals, and books of Flaubert, Nightingale, Du Camp, Mary Clarke Mohl, and others-I have also benefited from many secondary sources, including Gillian Gill's Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004); volumes 1, 4, and 7 of Lynn McDonald's definitive Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001, 2003, and 2004; vol. 4 edited by Gerard Vallee); and Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

Of the many French sources I consulted, one of the most useful was Michel Dewachter's and Daniel Oster's facsimile edition of Du Camp's original travelogue and photographs, Un voyager en egypte vers 1850: Le Nil de Maxime Du Camp (Paris: Sand/Conti, 1987). Also invaluable were Frederick Brown's Flaubert: A Biography (New York: Little, Brown, 2006) and Francis Steegmuller's The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 18301857 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980). Finally, Trout's relationship with Gilbert Pennafeather is closely modeled on Hannah Cullwick's relationship with Arthur Munby as described in The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited and introduced by Liz Stanley (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984).

Websites devoted to Flaubert, Nightingale, Du Camp, and almost everyone else in this book appear on the Internet in an ever-widening tide. For the eternally curious, a little googling will yield fascinating information, such as Flaubert's response to the government charges of obscenity against Madame Bovary; a photograph of "La Poetesse," the marble statue that Louise Colet is sitting for in James Pradier's studio when she meets Flaubert; and the round-robin p.o.r.nography that Richard Monckton Milnes penned with Sir Richard Burton and other literary luminaries. Our knowledge of the Victorians continues to grow, providing us an increasingly rich portrait of their age and a mirror for our own.

A FINAL NOTE.

This is a work of fiction inspired by real people. Though I have hewed close to the facts, I have also taken liberties with them. For example, Nightingale attended an amputation at Kaiserswerth, but a year later, on her second visit. The Baedeker that Flaubert drops in the Nile was in truth not yet available in a French version. Flaubert and Nightingale did indeed tour Egypt at the same moment with nearly identical itineraries, but as far as we know, they never met. However, the historical record does suggest that they glimpsed each other in November 1849 while being towed through the Mahmoudieh Ca.n.a.l from Alexandria to Cairo to that place on the Nile where still today one may engage a dahabiyah or cange and see the sights.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

BETH KELLY.

ENID SHOMER won the Iowa Fiction Prize for her first collection of stories, Imaginary Men, and the Florida Gold Medal for her second, Tourist Season, which was selected for Barnes & n.o.ble's "Discover Great New Writers" series. She is also the author of four books of poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and many other publications. As Visiting Writer, she has taught at the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, and the Ohio State University, among others. She lives in Tampa, Florida. The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is her first novel.

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